Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 year banking career, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, and other major industry publications. The American Bankers Association (ABA) published Barnewall’s Profitable Private Banking: the Complete Blueprint, in 1987. She taught private banking at Colorado University for the ABA and trained private bankers in Singapore.

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Are The School Shootings Being Used As A Tool To Disarm The Population?

By Marilyn M. Barnewall

News With Views

Feb 25, 2018

“I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”

That was what Nikolas Cruz said on You Tube. A man in
Mississippi saw the Cruz statement and did what the FBI, President Trump, and
the Justice Department encourages all of us to do. He saw something and
he said something about it – to the FBI. He reported the Cruz You Tube
statement that he intended to be a professional school shooter.

As it turns out, there were several notifications from the public
to law enforcement about Nikolas Cruz. Because no one listened almost 20
young people with all of the potential in the world were killed. The FBI
has apologized for its errors. That statement made me ill.

The FBI contacted and interviewed the man in Mississippi and
decided the information he provided “was not prosecutable” and investigated the
matter no further. Perhaps they were too busy trying to find Russian
connections to Donald Trump. They just didn’t have time to identify
someone who felt powerless and chose to prove he wasn’t by killing students at
a school where he was once a student.

Alicia Blonde is a teacher at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
and teaches many of its 3,000 students. She was interviewed on Fox News
last week. She too made me ill as I listened to her words that made clear
she is one of the blind progressive liberals who just cannot see the core of
the problem causing violence in America.

“It’s guns. It’s mental illness.” No one seems to see
the culture that has grown up around the world of technology. Children no
longer have real relationships with friends. They have Facebook.
Writing a message to someone on a computer or a cell phone isn’t the same as
playing games or eating dinner with them or telling them your real secrets.

We can identify the timing of the change in our culture from
non-violence to violence. It happened about the same time we removed God
from our schools. As long as there were firm moral guidelines in place
that told everyone do unto others as we want done to us we didn’t have
violence. We had childhood exuberance… which if you are a male has been
toned down by drugs. The feminists who run our school boards want boys to
become girls (easier to handle). They have largely succeeded.

Like most progressives, Blonde seeks simple solutions to complex
problems. You would think she might have learned from her own
background. Her parents brought her to America when they fled Cuba where
no one is allowed to own a gun. She should know that guns are not the
problem. The people who wield guns are the problem.

She reminds me of the liberal Californians who move to other
states because liberal policies ruined that state. They immediately
support political candidates who implement the same kind of policies that
caused California to become a nightmare from which people seek escape.

Are people just stupid?

We have had guns in this country from the first day a Pilgrim set
foot on American soil. For almost 400 years we had no school shootings.
We had very little violence until the last 50 years.

Facts like that do not penetrate thick skulls like Blonde’s and
her progressive friends. That piece of factual history does not cause the
“let’s take the guns from people” crowd to ask “Why did we go from 1607 when
Jamestown was founded until 1990s when the Columbine high school shooting in
Littleton occurred started all this violence? What has caused school shootings
to occur with periodic regularity ever since?

“What has changed and when did that change occur?”

There are several answers, but it is much easier for the limited
logic skills of progressives to say the words “gun control is needed.” It
is a stupid, short-sighted, emotional and non-factual answer to a problem
progressives seem incapable of grasping: It’s called “human nature.”

Throughout history, people have reacted violently when very
specific things happen.

1.When government becomes
abusive, a sense of tyranny permeates social attitudes. When citizens
observe government abusing their power it becomes acceptable in their minds to
abuse others; especially for children. They learn by example.
Government tyranny creates a social order dependent on a
survival-of-the-fittest mentality.

2.When firm
guidelines of moral behavior are removed from the social order, people push the
envelope as far as possible. We see that in the Middle East today.
Because Sharia Law makes violent behavior acceptable – it’s okay for men to
abuse women; it’s okay to lie to non-Muslims, it’s okay to kill
non-Muslims. Violence is part of their culture (if that can be called
culture).

Has it ever dawned on anyone that in those specific environments
tyrant leaders like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and
Syria’s Bashar Hafez al-Assad are the only form of power that prevents violence
in Islamic societies? They are not sufficiently advanced socially to
handle freedom. It is a world that encourages violence!

The schools where teachers, most of whom are liberal, teach the
“beauties of this peaceful religion” would get fired if they taught the
peaceful, loving and individualist philosophy of Jesus Christ.

3.In a country where its
founders wrote laws to govern the nation on the basis of their Christian faith
and when the people of the nation are not served by strong churches they seek
leadership elsewhere. Because no one in their church tells them anything
that might be considered politically incorrect and those who define what is
incorrect are liberals, people ignore what is best and seek what is
easiest. Easiest and better are not the same. Better requires a
willingness to do the right thing rather than the easiest thing. But to
do the right thing, someone has to set standards of right and wrong. The people
can then begin to see things in black and white rather than amoral grey.
Without leadership, people seek gratification rather than fulfillment.
The latter requires commitment and character. The former does not.

4.People get used to
“easy” rather than “better.” But not all things are easy. The loss
of a national election that everyone thought would be easy to win hit hard
people who have little character and who have been spoiled by getting what they
want. If they want something, they feel entitled to it. They vote
for people who promise the biggest something for nothing deals. Thus,
there is no character in the political forum, there is little meaningful
character in the nation’s churches, and people will follow almost anyone who
declares himself or herself to be a leader. As Robert Mueller’s report
evidences, they willingly (enthusiastically) follow those whose primary
objective is to cause chaos among voters.

As was made clear last week, all of the people who showed up for
pro and anti Trump demonstrations held in New York on the same day were
following Russian disinformation specialists whose objectives included
injecting violence into American elections. So much for New Yorkers being
more sophisticated than the rest of the country.

Character – and lack of it – matters. In their frustration,
people have become violent. President Donald Trump is telling
people with no character that they must develop it to survive – and it scares
them to death. It motivates violence among the mentally and emotionally
unstable which clearly defines the personalities of liberal progressives.
They are so unreasonable in their thinking as to believe guns are the problem
rather than the general lack of character that permeates our society.

What does a lack of character in politicians, corporate CEOs, and
church leaders mean? It means a willingness to sell one’s vote or
products or religion on the basis of what people like rather than what people
need.

I know it’s a hard word to deal with: Truth. They need
truth!

What does a lack of leadership based on a lack of character cause?

It causes young people who feel powerless to seek a way to
matter. They aren’t in control because government has become God.
There is no greater drive in the physical world than the need to have your life
matter. You know you’ll get your picture on the front page of the
newspaper if you pick up a gun to kill other people.

The truth is, if guns are not available those who feel they don’t
matter will start fires to kill people. Or they will use poison. Or
they will use explosives. Why? Because they gain fame which they
think makes them matter.

The problem is not guns. It is a society that is permeated
by “me, me, me” and a total lack of character. We have two generations
raising children who haven’t got a clue as to what good parenting requires.
The result is a generation of spoiled brats unable to handle problems
because their mommy solved problems for them rather than letting them learn
life’s lessons. Women of the 1970's felt liberation meant getting what they wanted
in life. They decided they wanted a baby to love (me, me, me) and were
never told that having a baby is about what the baby needs, not them.

Since 2012, the number of people who have been killed in school
shootings is 239.

On the other side of the coin, in 2010 alone, 230 people were shot
while committing a felony. From 2007 through 2011, the total number of
firearms used for self-protection was 338,700. That means at least a
half-million lives were saved because people owned a gun. That statistic
comes from the New York Times. According to the National Rifle
Association, self-protective gun use is much higher. The NRA states that
just owning a gun can dissuade someone from attacking your person or your home.

So liberal logic goes like this: To save 239 people from
school shootings, we must sacrifice the 338,700 that saved themselves by having
access to a gun.

They find that acceptable and enthusiastically support it.
They are idiots!

Every year guns have killed innocent people in the hands of those
who have NOT been taught by their parents, schools, churches, politicians and
business leaders how to develop character. They have certainly been given
no example of character outside of the home (and often inside the home as well).
They are not taught to stand up and fight for themselves in school yards.
Rather, they are told to adopt a fetal position and to wait for help to
arrive. They are taught that when they lose a contest they really are not
losers but are winners for participating. They are given a ribbon (which
denigrates the value of the ribbons of the winners). They are told they
matter when, until they do something worthy of mattering, they matter
little. Kids believe what they are told.

And liberal progressives think guns are responsible for shootings
rather than the frustrated people who cannot deal with their problems because
no one has taught them what the rules are or about morality?

It is as if school shootings are being used as a tool to get the
guns out of the hands of the people. It is as if planned chaos is being
used for the same reason… like tying up FBI agents’ time looking for proof that
Donald Trump is guilty of something — anything — that involves the
Russians. That, of course, would only happen if our Justice
Department were trying to destroy the nation.

Get Trump and get our guns. That’s all they care
about. And they will continue to let innocents be murdered because of
their closed minds. It’s the way they fight their battles: Dirty
and with lots of publicity sure to follow.

God bless the parents of the children and the adults and their
families killed in Florida. He is already blessing the dead. We are
all losers of the potential they brought to this life.

About Me

Marilyn MacGruder Barnewall began her career in 1956 as a journalist with the Wyoming Eagle in Cheyenne. During her 20 years (plus) as a banker and bank consultant, she wrote extensively for The American Banker, Bank Marketing Magazine, Trust Marketing Magazine, was U.S. Consulting Editor for Private Banker International (London/Dublin), and other major banking industry publications. Barnewall taught private banking at Colorado University and has authored seven banking books, one dog book, and two works of fiction and one biography.
Barnewall is the former editor of The National Peace Officer Magazine and has written editorials for the Denver Post, Rocky Mountain News and Newsweek, etc. She has written for News With Views, World Net Daily, Canada Free Press, Christian Business Daily, Business Reform, and others. She has been quoted in Time, Forbes, Wall Street Journal and other national and international publications. She can be found in Who's Who in America (2005-10), Who's Who of American Women (2006-10), Who's Who in Finance and Business (2006-10), and Who's Who in the World (2008).